Kids Are Playing Games, E-Mailing

• Posted: Saturday, December 29, 2007
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• Author: pradhana
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• Filed under: Digital Media

Q: What are your kids doing online?

A: Playing video games, most likely.

More than three-quarters of 6- to 11-year-olds surveyed by MRI for its "Survey of the American Consumer" report played online games in the past 30 days. That was by far the largest percent of any particular online activity.

Other top online activities among children included doing stuff for school (34.25%), listening to music (28.6%) and watching videos (26.2%).

The same percentage of boys and girls played online games. But boys were more likely (25.8%) than girls (5.6%) to go online for gaming tips or "cheats," the codes that change the behavior of games.

"The wide gap between the percentage of boys and girls using cheats could suggest boys are more engaged with their games, an insight of interest to marketers targeting kids," said Anne Marie Kelly, vice president of marketing at MRI.

Girls were more likely than boys to have listened to music online in the past 30 days (33% vs. 24.1%), and slightly more boys than girls watched online videos (28.9% vs. 23.5%).

Nearly three in 10 children who had been online in the past 30 days had their own e-mail addresses.

MRI sent questionnaires to households with children ages 6 to 11 and received answers from about 5,000 children. [eMarketer]

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